Payton Talbott escalates feud with Adin Ross as shocking DM exchange goes public

Talbott joined Ariel Helwani’s show following his win over Cejudo, covering several topics from his strong showing. Beyond that, he opened up on his growing dispute with Ross.

“It’s legit. I recently saw he put a bounty on my head… Then he said he was going to sue me, I’m sure he was joking or whatever. But that’s kind of my point. The one thing he can do to maintain relevance is to put a f—ing bounty on my head?”

“That’s why I said no in the first place… That’s the gripe I have with streaming culture. He has no ability to do anything to me so he’s offering money to someone else to produce some kind of viral moment. That’s why I don’t like it. It’s vampiric and leechy.

“Just pointing a camera at someone and saying ‘now clap like a monkey, wait do it again the chat missed it’? I just don’t like that… I don’t hate those people or anything, I just don’t want to be part of it.”

Payton Talbott sent Adin Ross graphic photo in response to stream offer

One of the more talked-about stories before the fight was when Ross asked Talbott to appear on one of his streams. According to the UFC star, he turned down the offer with a graphic photo, and Ross reportedly took it in good humour, saying they could still be friends.

“He DM’d me asking me and this is everywhere but I sent him a picture with my decline. I said ‘no, I would not like to be on your stream, stream these instead’ and sent some nice b—s… They were really good looking, a good pair of b—s.

“He kind of passed the vibe check, he was like ‘good luck anyway’, laughed and asked if we could still be friends. I just left it at that, but I guess he doesn’t want to be friends any more he wants to put a bounty on me, big scary bounty… Like nobody’s trying to knock me out as it is.”